In his series novels, Parker has touched on many of the issues explored in more depth here. However, we are given a greater insight into the lives of the rich and powerful in this novel, something Spenser only glimpses from the outside. Like other largescale family sagas, this work of fiction reveals a large panorama of social and political events and delves below the surface of Boston society and pursues the rise to power of the immigrantIrish Sheridans. Like other such books about the rise of a family from poverty to riches, All Our Yesterdays is a cau tionary tale about the American experience and traces the drives for success, many of which are unconventional and illegal, that have characterized the rise of the powerful in this country.

There are certainly echoes in the story, however faint, of the Kennedy family experience with their history of...